The Immigration Ban, Israel, Patriot White House Boycott, Kaepernick & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List February 5 - 12

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.




This list covers the week of February 5-12. It is in order of date of the article's release.

1) Colin Kaepernick is the real MVP

Josh Kolic, The Hoop and the Harm

I can’t think of a time in my life when people of colour were in more danger than they are right now.

I was born in the early 80s. At the height of the Reagan administrations efforts to turn back the clockto a pre-Civil Rights America. I vividly remember Hillary Clinton’s “super predators ” comment about young black men in 1996 to defend her husband’s crime bill which saw a good percentage of almost a generation of black men lost to mass incarceration. I was coming into my own as an activist during the George W. Bush years where Kanye West famously and quite accurately summed up how W felt about black people. Right up to the unfulfilled promise of the Obama years where talk of “hope” and “change” amounted to nothing at all.

Read the full article.

2) Canada 150: Rosemary Brown, an outspoken pioneer for women of colour

Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun

Tireless advocate for the disadvantaged — “Until all of us have made it, none of us have made it” — Rosemary Brown was a gritty, outspoken feminist and provincial legislator with a vision of equality much broader than defined by race or gender.

Read the full article. 

3) Israeli Support for Trump Gives American Jews a Taste of Their Own Medicine

Chemi Shalev, Haaretz

American Jews should brace themselves. Next Wednesday is not going to be pleasant. Benjamin Netanyahu is coming to Donald Trump’s White House and in all likelihood it’s going to be a love fest. The two leaders could be all over each other with hugs and kisses and songs of praise. Many American Jews, probably most, will feel a bit queasy. They’ll do their best to avert their eyes and look the other way.

Read the full article.

4) The age of Trump spells the end of the Zionist dream

Ben Lorber, 972mag.com

When Israel backs an American regime that threatens our liberty as humans and our safety as Jews, the claim that Zionism protects Jews no longer holds.

Read the full article.

5) The Unions Betraying the Left

Erik Loomis, New Republic

Days after the inauguration, the leaders of several building trade unions met with President Donald Trump at the White House, outraging those on the left who want organized labor to lead the resistance to the president’s anti-worker policies. The building trades cited Trump’s call for infrastructure investment and their warm personal relationship with him as reasons to be optimistic about his presidency. As reported in The New York Times, Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trade Unions, stated, “We have a common bond with the president. We come from the same industry. He understands the value of driving development, moving people to the middle class.” Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) President Terry O’Sullivan talked of Trump’s “commitment to creating hundreds of thousands of working-class jobs.”

Read the full article. 

6) US police have already killed more than 100 people this year

Rachael Revesz, The Independent

More than one hundred people have died in the hands of law enforcement on the same day that Sandra Bland, an African American woman who died behind bars, would have celebrated hr 30th birthday.

Read the full article. 

7) In Mexico, Trump triggers a surge in patriotism, anti-American sentiment

Laura Tillman, Los Angeles Times

Recently, Alma Siller Contreras traveled to the U.S. Consulate in the northern Mexican city of Hermosillo with a mission: to hand over her tourist visa, along with a handwritten message about U.S. President Trump.

Read the full article. 

8) THE ERASURE OF HISTORY: LUKÁCS FORGOTTEN

Jerome Warren, Look Left

The statue of a Jewish Marxist intellectual in Budapest is being taken down, while at the same time, the statue of an anti-Semite fascist (Bálint Hóman) is being raised up. This is a deep insult to all those who fought against fascism. A trampling of history typically accompanies any fascist regime. One need only look at Spain under Franco, Greece under the Colonels, Brazil under Vargas and so on: a recurring trend is the revision of history and the expulsion of facts that don’t gel well with the predominant narrative.

Read the full article. 

9) United Nations, EU condemn Israel legalizing settlements on Palestinian land

Gabriela Baczynska, Reuters

The European Union's foreign policy chief and the United Nations secretary-general on Tuesday criticized an Israeli move to legalize thousands of settler homes on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

Read the full article.

10) Sex work or slavery?: Why human rights discourse is no longer a tool for liberation

Nandita Haksar, Scroll.in

After nearly four decades as a human rights lawyer and teacher, I have realised that the human rights discourse is no longer a tool for emancipation and liberation but an instrument of foreign policy used by the West to control and dominate the world.

Read the full article.

11) Six Patriots Players Are Refusing To Meet Trump, Raising The Pressure On Their Teammates

Jim Dalrymple II. Buzz Feed

Fresh off their win at the Super Bowl, six members of the New England Patriots have backed out of the traditional post-game meeting with President Donald Trump — a sharp new sign of deepening American divisions.

Read the full article.

12) What if every single woman went on strike for a day?

Sarah Boesveld, Chatelaine

Activists in the United States asked women to show up to defend their rights on January 21, 2017. And show up they did: The Women’s March on Washington is set to go down as one of the largest single-day protests in American history, with half a million people flooding D.C.’s streets, not to mention the hundreds of sister marches around the world, with a turnout of nearly 120,000 across Canada.

Read the full article.

13) With Executive Order on Policing, Trump Declares Racialized War on Dissent

Flint Taylor, Truthout

On the heels of the much ballyhooed meeting that an obsequious Donald Trump conducted this week with local law enforcement officials from across the country, the president titillated the gendarmes with a threat to destroy -- COINTELPRO style -- an unnamed Texas state senator rumored to be introducing legislation to prevent law enforcement from financing police operations by seizing arrestees' property before they have been found guilty in a court of law. On Thursday, Trump followed up with an executive order that gave the recently confirmed Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions a carte blanche to bring down the wrath of the federal government on anyone who is unfortunate enough to have a confrontation with a cop, a prison guard, a border patrol officer or who knows who else outfitted with a badge and carrying a gun.

Read the full article. 

14) Surviving Post-Capitalism: Coping, hoping, doping & shopping

CBC Radio Ideas

The signs are troubling: the ever-widening chasm between the ultra-rich and everyone else. Mass protests. Political upheaval and social division. It looks as though the rocky marriage between capitalism and democracy is doomed, at least according to Wolfgang Streeck, who directs the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, where he is also a professor of sociology. In conversation with Paul Kennedy about his book How Will Capitalism End?, he makes the unnerving case that capitalism is now at a point where it cannot survive itself.

Read the full article.

15) Jeff Sessions wasn't just Donald Trump's doing. Blame radical Republicans, too

Douglas Williams, The Guardian

Donald Trump has often been painted as being at odds with the Republican party. Hillary Clinton once declared that Trump was “taking hate groups mainstream, and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican party”. But the Republican party has always been radical – and now we are seeing that radicalism writ large.

Read the full article.

16) Looming Climate Catastrophe: Extinction in Nine Years?

Dave Lindorff, Counterpunch

Reports from the Arctic are getting pretty grim.

The latest, from a blog called Arctic News, warns that by 2026 — that’s just nine years from now — warming above the Arctic Circle could be so extreme that a massively disrupted and weakened jet stream could lead to global temperature rises so severe that a massive extinction event, including humans, could result.

Read the full article.

17) Rio's Olympic venues, six months on – in pictures

The Guardian

Six months after hosting South America’s first-ever Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Rio de Janeiro venues – some of which have been looted – sit mainly idle and already in disrepair, raising questions about a legacy that organisers promised would benefit the Brazilian city and its residents

Read the full article.

18) Reporter Robyn Doolittle Takes Us Behind the Scenes of “Unfounded”

Ishani Nath, Flare

The term “unfounded” used to be just another adjective, but thanks to investigative reporter Robyn Doolittle, it is now a pressing issue that all of Canada is talking about.

Read the full article.

19) More Americans joining socialist groups under Trump

Patrick Strickland, Aljazeera

Socialist groups see huge spike in membership as they join protests against US President Donald Trump.

Read the full article. 

20) Trudeau's 'canoes and paddles' remark called borderline racist by First Nations MP

John Paul Tasker, CBC News

A First Nations NDP MP has written a biting, satirical letter to Justin Trudeau to "thank" him for controversial remarks he made about Indigenous youth, while taking aim at the prime minister's suggestion that some chiefs are out of touch with the needs of young people living on reserve.

Read the full article. 

21) Trump furious after court upholds block on travel ban

 Ariane de Vogue and Laura Jarrett, CNN

President Donald Trump's travel ban will remain blocked, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel means that citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries will continue to be able to travel to the US, despite Trump's executive order last month.

Read the full article. 

22) Army veterans return to Standing Rock to form a human shield against police

Sam Levin, The Guardian

US veterans are returning to Standing Rock and pledging to shield indigenous activists from attacks by a militarized police force, another sign that the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline is far from over.

Read the full article. 

23) Husbands Are Deadlier Than Terrorists

Nicholas Kristof, New York Times

With the President Trump Reality Show, it’s easy to be distracted by ANGRY ALL-CAPITAL TWEETS or Oval Office tantrums. But resist, and stay focused on matters of life and death.

Consider two critical issues: refugees and guns. Trump is going berserk over the former, but wants to ease rules on the latter. So let’s look at the relative risks.

Read the full article. 

24) Michael Bennett explains why he refuses to go to Israel as ‘an ambassador of good will’

 Alysha Tsuji, USA Today

Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett will not be going to Israel on a trip with other NFL players sponsored by the Israeli government.

Read the full article.

25) Donald Trump 'won't challenge Muslim travel ban' in Supreme Court

Andrew Buncombe and Feliks Garcia, The Independent

Campaigners opposed to Donald Trump's travel ban are celebrating after the White House said it would not challenge an appeals court ruling in the Supreme Court.

Read the full article. 

26) Teachers' act of civil disobedience should inspire us all

Larry Haiven, Localxpress

In one of the boldest acts of civil disobedience in the province’s history, Nova Scotia’s teachers, a most unlikely group, voted last week for the third time to reject the government’s public sector bargaining agenda.

Read the full article.


See also: Trump, Quebec City, Fukushima & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List January 29 - February 5

See also: The Trump Administration, O'Leary, the Women's Marches & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List January 22-29

Black Lives Matter, Right Sector, Canadian Labour & more -- 2016 on The Left Chapter in review

2016 saw 236 posts of various kinds on The Left Chapter. Expanding on a great first year in 2015, 2016 saw record numbers of hits and readers month-after-month as the year progressed.

I want to thank all of our readers and contributors very much for their feedback, support, criticisms and engagement. I look forward to what 2017 has in store.

The year had many posts that came very, very close to making this list including posts about the Canadian Labour Congress and the Liberals, McMaster and neo-Nazis, Pam Anderson and pornography, the Left and road tolls, Colin Kaepernick and a very popular post about "Strongest", an vintage Soviet children's story.

We also had contributions from other writers that were widely read and shared, such as Simon Dougherty's trenchant look at Trudeau and "Elbowgate", Jesse Zimmerman's take on how "The Blairites and NDP leadership share the same contempt for their party members", Natalie Lochwin's powerful exploration of her past as an anti-abortion activist, or 11 year old Julia Laxer's poem on why we should remember the fallen on Remembrance Day.

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed this year and I look forward to seeing what interesting viewpoints and arguments we see next year!

(Remember that if you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share or if you want to share a petition/appeal or upcoming event you can send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!)

Here, without further ado, are the top ten posts (in terms of hits) on The Left Chapter in 2016:

1) Black Lives Matter is right -- The police are the oppressor

You know, it is always appalling to see some oblivious white idiot walking around with the horrifically racist Cleveland Indians logo on their chest or on some sign of some kind.

I did not see this specific idiot in the picture, but saw another entitled white idiot, strolling down the platform of the Go Station after a Jays-Indians game this year with this disgraceful caricature on the front of her jersey.

Read the full article.

2) What is far-right organization Right Sector doing marching in Toronto's Ukrainian Festival Parade?

Toronto's Ukrainian Festival is an annual celebration of Ukrainian culture and food that takes place on Bloor St. W. and that draws large crowds looking to enjoy some traditional song and dance, perogies and all the other things that get people out to festivals. The organizers say it is the world's largest such festival.

Read the full article.

3) Just what is going on with Canada's labour movement leadership?

The last few weeks have seen a series of what are seemingly truly perplexing moves and actions by some of the country's most important labour leaders.

Read the full article.

4) Canada Post's 'problems' are driven by the neo-liberal assault on public services

The "problems" facing Canada Post are entirely ideological.

Canada's politicians and media have bought into a long-term project driven by right-wing notions of society and the economy that seeks to re-frame public services as "businesses" that should be run "efficiently" along the lines allegedly followed by the private sector. 

Read the full article.

5) Viral photo of North Dakota Pipeline Protest is 100% FAKE. Stop sharing it.

A photo is going viral on Facebook that purports to show the Standing Rock Pipeline protest in North Dakota.

Read the full article.

6) NDP inhibits internal democracy with steep leadership race entry fee

Excited about the possibilities that the upcoming NDP leadership race might allow?

Wondering if an insurgent campaign might arise and if an outsider or unexpected candidate might lead to something akin to what happened with Corbyn in the Labour Party?

Read the full article.

7) Stop sharing the refugees vs. seniors internet myths!

Have you seen this Facebook post circulating around?

Sadly and depressingly it has been shared more than 44,000 times as of this posting.

Old myths along these lines have been around for a long time and have been repeatedly disproved and shown to be false or totally misleading.

Read the full article.

8) The wages of liberalism is Trump

After a generation of retreat that saw its abandoning of the welfare state and of any meaningful advocacy for working people and much of the middle class in the United States, it can now truly be said that the wages of liberalism is Trump.

Read the full article.

9) It's Not Over -- Bernie Sanders releases campaign ad unlike any you have ever seen

Yesterday, the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination released a campaign ad unlike any you have ever seen.

Read the full article.

10) Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism

Do you remember this moment?

That time when newly minted President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for absolutely nothing other than having won an election in the wake of the George Bush apparent catastrophe and for having given nice speeches about "hope", closing down Guantanamo and supposedly taking the US in a new direction that would be a departure from the death dealing of the past.

So how did that all work out?

Read the full article.

See also: Racist Memes, Andrew Coyne, the NDP's Disaster & more! -- The Top Ten Posts and the year on The Left Chapter in review

See also: Canadian Labour, Trump, McMaster & more -- October and November on The Left Chapter in review

Climate Change, Porn Culture, Tolls & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List December 11 - 18

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.


This list covers the week of December 11 - 18. It is in order of date of the article's  release.


1) Canada doesn't deserve a black woman on its money

CBC Radio 

Canada has a long way to go in its relationship with black communities before it should put Viola Desmond on its currency.

Desmond — a successful black businesswoman known for courageously refusing to leave a whites-only area of a Nova Scotia movie theatre in 1946 — will replace Sir John A. Macdonald on the $10 bill in 2018.

But according to Toronto writer Septembre Anderson, putting Desmond on Canadian money perpetuates the myth that the country is closer to racial equity than it actually is.

Read the full article.

2) Half the world's species failing to cope with global warming as Earth races towards its sixth mass extinction

Ian Johnston, The Independent

Nearly half the species on the planet are failing to cope with the global warming the world has already experienced, according to an alarming new study that suggests the sixth mass extinction of animal life in the Earth’s history could take place in as little as 50 years.

Read the full article.

3) Pipeline Spills 176,000 Gallons of Oil Into Creek 150 Miles From Dakota Access Protests

Tom Dichristopher, CNBC

A pipeline leak has spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into a North Dakota creek roughly two and a half hours from Cannon Ball, where protesters are camped out in opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline.

Read the full article.

4) David Suzuki says economy cannot trump environment

David Suzuki is not hiding his displeasure with the federal approval of the Trans Mountain and Line 3 pipeline expansion projects.

The renowned environmentalist told CBC's The Early Edition the economic arguments for the projects don't make sense.

Read the full article.

5) Anti-poverty activist says action needed on welfare, not more study

CBC Radio

Meetings are underway in Sudbury as the province begins looking at establishing a guaranteed basic income for the region's poorest. But Gary Kinsman, with the Raise The Rates advocacy group in Sudbury, says action is needed now to raise welfare rates.

Hear the full interview.

6) Men’s-Rights Activists Are Finding a New Home With the Alt-Right

Claire Landsbaum, NYMag.com

Back in May, while addressing a crowd of supporters in Spokane, Washington, Donald Trump took time to lament the current state of gender relations. “All of the men, we’re petrified to speak to women anymore,” he said. “We may raise our voice — you know what, the women get it better than we do, folks, they get it better than we do.”

Read the full article.

7) Arctic shatters heat records, triggers massive ice melt

Olivier Moon, AFP

The Arctic shattered heat records in the past year as unusually warm air triggered massive melting of ice and snow and a late fall freeze, U.S. government scientists said Tuesday.

The grim assessment came in the Arctic Report Card 2016, a peer-reviewed document by 61 scientists around the globe issued by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Read the full article.

8) The impact of porn culture on girls is too big to ignore

Laurie Oliva, Feminist Current

If we were to plot events that have significantly altered the female experience, one of them would have to be the arrival of porn culture and the role of technology in this advancing phenomenon.

Last month a 12-year-old boy was sentenced for repeatedly raping his sister after “becoming fascinated with hardcore porn.” The boy had typed in search terms online in order to find incest porn. The prosecutor in the case said, “Cases of this nature will increasingly come before the court because of the access young people now have to hard core pornography.”

Read the full article.

9) The year as we saw it: 10 charts that defined Ontario in 2016

Trish Hennessy and Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite, Behind the Numbers

The experts at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Ontario office have been tracking economic developments in Ontario throughout the year. Some problems persist: the gender pay gap, social assistance poverty, the use of expensive payday loans as a last resort because traditional banks fail to serve low-income customers as well as they should.

Read the full article. 

10) How Patrick Brown retracts, recants, renounces

Martin Regg Cohn, Toronto Star

We all harbour secret fantasies. Especially politicians.

Some dream of power and glory. Others fantasize about running a marathon in under three hours.

And some dream of doing God’s will in Ontario as it is in heaven. Without anyone knowing their glorious secret in advance.

Read the article.

11) Trump’s 17 cabinet-level picks have more money than a third of American households combined

Dan Kopf, Quartz

The 17 people who US president-elect Donald Trump has selected for his cabinet or for posts with cabinet rank have well over $9.5 billion in combined wealth, with several positions still unfilled. This collection of wealth is greater than that of the 43 million least wealthy American households combined—over one third of the 126 million households total in the US.

Read the full article.

12) Federal cabinet secretly approved Cold War wiretaps on anyone deemed 'subversive,' historian finds

 Dave Seglins & Rachel Houlihan, CBC 

A Canadian historian has found top secret documents from the dawn of the Cold War that show the federal government secretly approved an RCMP surveillance program to wiretap suspected spies, communist sympathizers and others deemed "disloyal" or "subversive."

Read the full article.

13) Russia Today and the post-truth virus

Idrees, Pulse

A video is circulating of a woman revealing “the truth” on Syria that is being withheld from us by “the mainstream media”. The woman is introduced as an “independent Canadian journalist”. She is said to be speaking  “at the UN”. The date is December 9, 2016. The video has become viral.

Read the full article.

14) Petition: Open the armouries for shelter

Cathy Crowe, change.org

Toronto's shelter system is full and people are routinely turned away. The overflow, volunteer-run Out of the Cold program is similarly full. Last winter, the two 24-hour warming centres were overcrowded, sleeping people inches away from each other on mats on the floor. A serious Strep A outbreak has resulted in a loss of over 100 shelter beds. Hundreds of people are abandoned, forced to sleep outside in parks, ravines, under bridges and on sidewalks.

Read and sign the petition.

15) New map reveals shattering effect of roads on nature

Damian Carrington, The Guardian

Rampant road building has shattered the Earth’s land into 600,000 fragments, most of which are too tiny to support significant wildlife, a new study has revealed.

Read the full article.

16) ‘Tyrants across the world know now they can maintain power through mass slaughter.’ Interview with Leila al-Shami for Open Left

LeftEast

Leila al-Shami, co-author of Burning Country, a writer who has worked with human rights movements in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, gave this interview to Ilya Matveev and Gabriel Levy on 29 November for OpenLeft (before the fall of Aleppo to the government forces). It sheds some light on the social and geopolitical situation which has rendered the Allepo crisis so severe in these past weeks. It is also, however, part of an emerging transnational conversation between anti-war activists in Russia and Syrian activists, spearheaded by portals such as OpenLeft, where the interview will soon appear in Russian.

Read the full article. 

17) "To Call it the Liberation of Aleppo is an Insult to our Dignity”

Arash Azizi, IranWire

On December 15, as buses were getting ready to evacuate people from East Aleppo, which had just fallen to the forces of Bashar al-Assad, IranWire spoke to a local resident of the city, a  young woman who was born in Aleppo and has lived there most of her life. She gave us her take on the tumultuous events of the last few days.

Read the full article

18) How Clinton lost Michigan — and blew the election

Edward-Issac Dovere

Everybody could see Hillary Clinton was cooked in Iowa. So when, a week-and-a-half out, the Service Employees International Union started hearing anxiety out of Michigan, union officials decided to reroute their volunteers, giving a desperate team on the ground around Detroit some hope.

Read the full article.

19) On Toronto Tolls, Marxists Align with Auto Industrial Complex

Yves Engler, Dissident Voice

What’s left and what’s right? Usually it is obvious, but sometimes you have to take a step back and consider the bigger picture.

For example, the Toronto toll debate has exposed a lack of scrutiny of the leading source of corporate profit over the past century by many supposed leftists. Absent a political economy of the auto industrial complex, many Marxists have objectively allied themselves with the private car’s awesome political, cultural and ideological power.

Read the full article.

20) The shameful fascism of The Walking Dead

Sean T. Collins

As 2016 stumbles to a close, the acceptable pathways for talking about the politics of pop culture are as well-beaten as the skull of one of Negan's enemies. "Talk Show Host EVISCERATES Politician." "Show X Has a Y Problem." Discussions of cast, character, and creator diversity. But one of television's most prominent franchises has a fundamental and frightening ethical flaw that has been left to fester.

The show is The Walking Dead. The flaw is fascism.

Read the full article.

See also: Last Tango in Paris, the TDSB, Duterte & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List December 4 - 11

See also: Fidel Castro, Justin Trudeau, Cornel West & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List November 27 - December 4

Last Tango in Paris, the TDSB, Duterte & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List December 4 - 11

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.

This list covers the week of December 4-11. It is in order of date of the article's  release.

1) Austria rejects far-right candidate Norbert Hofer in presidential election

Phillip Oltermann, The Guardian

Austria has decisively rejected the possibility of the EU getting its first far-right head of state, instead electing a former leader of the Green party who said he would be an “open-minded, liberal-minded and above all a pro-European president”.

Read the full article. 

2) Standing Rock protesters celebrate 'big victory' as pipeline construction halted

CBC News

Standing Rock protesters celebrated Sunday as news broke that construction of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline near their territory has been halted.

Read the full article

3) Last Tango scandal shows toxic extent of male power in the film industry

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

My female friends and colleagues, online and off, have been bleakly unimpressed this weekend by a recent display of bland and worldly impenitence from Bernardo Bertolucci about how he created the “butter” scene in the 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. But they are still more unimpressed about the resulting liberal horror, as if this was a bizarre and scandalous one-off, and not simply yet another detail in the colossal architecture of male power in the movies and everywhere else.

Read the full article

4) THEY CAN STILL FEEL SHAME! CONSERVATIVE LEADERS DUCK AND COVER IN WAKE OF SATURDAY’S DISGRACEFUL DISPLAY

David Climenhaga, Albertapolitics.ca

With some of the most debased elements of Canada’s so-called conservative movement openly on display at last weekend’s “anti-carbon-tax” demonstration in Edmonton, I suppose it’s mildly reassuring several conservative leaders were trying hard yesterday to put a little daylight between themselves and the event’s organizers.

Read the full article.

5) Canada’s Sexual Assault Problem

Kate McInturff, Behind the Numbers

It is more dangerous to be a woman than a man in Canada today.

The most recent survey of violent victimization in the country found that women are now more likely to be victims of violent crime than are men. And the reason is this: while most violent crime has declined over the past decade in Canada, one violent crime has not: sexual assault. Because women make up the majority of victims of sexual assault (87%), they are not sharing in the benefits of declining crime rates.

Read the full article.

6) TDSB Optional Attendance: Drake's High School May Close, Revealing Ugly Truth In Toronto

Angelyn Francis, Huffington Post

Some days, it seems like Jason Kunin knows the whole neighbourhood.

The English and film teacher has worked at Toronto high school Vaughan Road Academy (VRA) for about 16 years, but he also lives just five blocks away in the Oakwood/Vaughan area.

Read the full article.

7) 27 years after Polytechnique, battle against misogyny continues

Montreal Gazette Editorial Board

Every year we pause to reflect on the 14 female engineering students who were shot to death at École Polytechnique by a gunman with a vendetta against women.

Read the full article

8) The Implicit Misogyny Of Joseph Boyden's Open Letter

Karyn L. Freedman, Huffington Post

It has been a tough few weeks for CanLit, so we've been told. The Galloway affair, first brought to the public's attention last November after Steven Galloway was suspended by UBC as Chair of the Creative Writing Program in light of serious allegations made against him of sexual assault, harassment, and bullying, has been in the spotlight once again.

Read the full article.

9) What lies beneath prostitution policy in New Zealand?

Maddy Coy & Pala Molisa, 50.50

Prostitution and trafficking are increasingly contested in international human rights and policy forums, with debates polarised around the question of whether the prostitution system entrenches institutionalised male dominance, or if its harm grows out of associated criminality and stigma. In April 2016 France joined other countries in adopting the approach now often referred to as the Nordic Model – decriminalisation of selling sex alongside exit and support programmes, together with criminalisation of sex purchase. This human rights approach sits in sharp contrast to the endorsement of the New Zealand approach by Amnesty International and in the interim report of the UK Home Affairs Select Committee.

Read the full article.

10) Some Showrunners Are Banning Rape as a Plot Device on Their Shows

Almee Lutkin, Jezebel

Much writing has been dedicated to the problems with how rape is used to motivate characters in our favorite television shows, particularly Game of Sex and Violence. Generally, women get raped and men get motivated to grow as characters because of that rape.

Read the full article.

11) CUPE sues Kathleen Wynne, two ministers to halt sale of Hydro One

Rob Ferguson, Toronto Star

A major union has followed through its threat to sue Premier Kathleen Wynne and two cabinet ministers to halt the further privatization of Hydro One.

Read the full article.

12) ‘They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals’

Daniel Berehulak, New York Times

Inside President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal antidrug campaign in the Philippines, our photojournalist documented 57 homicide victims over 35 days.

Read the full article.

13) Toronto police officer admits he stayed silent while partner fabricated evidence to send a man to jail

Stephen Spencer Davis, National Post

A Toronto police officer remained silent even as his partner’s fabricated evidence helped send a man to jail, a disciplinary tribunal heard Tuesday.

Const. Brian Davy pleaded guilty to one count of insubordination at the Toronto police disciplinary tribunal for his actions following the 2013 arrest of Nguyen Son Tran, the man at the centre of a scandal that’s prompted criminal charges against several officers.

Read the full article.

14) How People In Toronto Are Fighting Back Against Growing Neo-Nazi and Fascist Groups

Ashley Renders, Vice

Kevin Metcalf, an activist who independently tracks extremism in Toronto, walked into an far-right event last month with a camera in his hand.

He was there to find out who was part of a relatively new right-wing group called Alternative for Canada (Alt4Can). The group's founder, Mark Stewart, claims he's not a white supremacist or even part of the alt-right, but believes Canada should reflect its supposed European heritage. Metcalf says the group is the new face of fascism in Canada.

Read the full article.

15) Call centre workers speak out about abuse by public

Vanessa Lu, Toronto Star

Kaoutar Belaaziz says she has been told by customers that her name doesn’t sound white, and that they want to speak to someone who is white.

Read the full article.

16) Trudeau's Liberals join with Conservatives to vote down anti-poverty bill

Press Progress

Well, it was worth the shot.

One in seven Canadians currently live in poverty, but Liberal and Conservative MPs voted together Tuesday night to defeat Bill C-245 which called for the creation of a "national poverty reduction strategy in Canada."

Read the full article.

17) Men killed 900 women in six years in England and Wales, figures show

Helen Pidd, The Guardian

More than 900 women were killed by men in England and Wales over a six-year period, most by their current or former partners, according to the first detailed analysis of deadly male violence against women in those countries.

Read the full article.

18) Bertolucci’s justification for the Last Tango rape scene is bogus. It’s called ‘acting’ for a reason

Jessica Tovey, The Guardian

Once, before filming an intimate scene, my director sat my male co-star and me down with some Barbie dolls. She wanted to take us through exactly how we were going to do it on screen – how we would position our bodies, where the camera would be. She wanted to make us feel comfortable about something that is awkward and difficult to shoot by empowering us with knowledge about what we were about to do.

Read the full article. 

19) Optional attendance is killing neighbourhood schools

Jason Kunin, Toronto Star

After 90 years, Vaughan Road Academy — the high school where I have spent the past 17 years of my teaching career — will close at the end of this school year.

Read the full article.

See also: Fidel Castro, Justin Trudeau, Cornel West & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List November 27 - December 4

See also: Castro, Climate Change, Trump & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List November 20 - 27

The NFL, Landlord Licensing, Žižek & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List October 30 - November 6

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.


This list covers the week of October 30-November 6. It is in order of date of the article's  release.



1) Twenty-First Century Victorians

Jason Tebbe, Jacobin

The word Victorian tends to evoke old-fashioned ideas: women confined in corsets, strict gender roles, and a prudishness about all things sexual. In a world where conspicuous consumerism and self-expression rule, these nineteenth-century notions of self-restraint and self-denial seem hopelessly outdated.

But the Victorian ethos is not dead, not by a long shot.

Read the full article.

2) NFL ratings are down because racists despise black men who are truly free 

Shaun King, New York Daily News

NFL ratings are down. And they aren’t down by a fraction of a percent, but are down by double digit percentages. For a product that is essentially the same as it was last year, or the previous years, such a rapid decline is shocking. Ratings for “Monday Night Football” are down a staggering 24%. The decline for “Sunday Night Football” is 19% and “Thursday Night Football” is right behind them with an 18% decline.

Read the full article

3) State of disrepair: tenant survey bolsters call for landlord licensing

Laurie Monsebraaten, Toronto Star

Cockroaches and bedbugs, poor ventilation and mold, faulty elevators and lack of heat in the winter.

These are among the most common problems faced by Toronto tenants, according to a new survey being released Tuesday.

Read the full article

4) The 'Drunk Teacher' saga is a cautionary tale for the social media age

CBC Radio

Until last week, if you'd googled the name "Klara Bowman," the search would have come back with a series of stories about a drunk teacher who was fired from her job in Tacoma, Washington.

That was before a columnist with The News Tribune in Tacoma decided to uncover Klara Bowman's full story.

Read the full article

5) Canadian media giant apologizes to Independent Jewish Voices Canada

IJVC

Dear Friend,

I am very pleased to present the following Vancouver Sun statement along with an Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) Op-Ed and member Corey Levine's letter printed in their newspaper, and posted on their website and the websites of the Ottawa Citizen and the Calgary Herald. We encourage you to add your comments on their websites.

Read the full article

6) Instead of blaming Black Lives Matter for police getting killed, conservatives should look in the mirror 

Shaun King, New York Daily News

Something truly terrible happened Wednesday morning.

Two police officers in Iowa, Justin Martin and Tony Beminio, were shot and killed. Police described each successive shooting as an ambush that each officer never saw coming. Like most officers, these men had adoring families and a network of friends and colleagues who are absolutely devastated by this loss.

Read the full article

7)  The Sweetest Escape: The Chicago Cubs Win the World Series

Dave Zirin, The Nation

There are no words. If the greatest predictor of the future is the past, why would anyone think that the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series in our lifetime? They hadn’t won a title since 1908. They hadn’t even appeared in the Series since 1945, before Jackie Robinson broke the damn color line. This is a team with every possible resource, rooted in a major market, managed by future Hall of Famer Joe Maddon and stocked with players chosen by the man who brought a World Series title to Boston, “The Curse-Breaker,” Theo Epstein. And yet even with all of these rational indicators, baseball fans know that this is an irrational sport.

Read the full article

8) 7 Reasons So Many Guys Don’t Understand Sexual Consent

David Wong, Cracked

The following sentence applies regardless of when you read this: A famous man has recently been accused of doing sexual things to a woman (or many women) without consent. At the time of this writing, it was a politician's "groping" scandal but next time it'll be unwanted dick pics a powerful man sent to an intern, or the spreading of hacked photos of some actress, or a famous athlete getting sued by a woman whose accusations didn't get anywhere with the police. And, in fact, I bet there isn't a single female reading this who hasn't been the victim of that sort of thing.

Well, here's something you should know: I was taught from birth that this behavior is exactly what women want.

Read the full article

9) Homeless speak out about harsh treatment by police

Laurie Monsabraaten, Toronto Star

After visiting a friend at a downtown hospital last month, Toby Nicol stopped on his way out to make a call from a courtesy phone. Suddenly he was surrounded by four burly hospital security guards who demanded to know what he was doing.

“Before I knew it, they had handcuffed me and called police,” said Nicol, 35, a peer leader at St. Stephen’s Community House, which works with homeless and marginally-housed people in Toronto’s downtown core.

Read the full article

10) Enbridge making Toronto Hydro privatization pitch

David Rider, Toronto Star

Calgary-based energy giant Enbridge Inc. is making a Toronto Hydro privatization pitch even before city council has decided to debate selling a chunk of the utility.

Enbridge’s “unsolicited proposal” is part of an uptick in pro- and anti-privatization lobbying reminiscent of the battle before council rejected a downtown waterfront casino proposal in 2013.

Read the full article

11) New ad campaign takes aim at racist Toronto

Derek Flack, Blog TO

A new ad campaign on Toronto bus shelters confronts anti-black racism head-on with a series of posters that challenge viewers to question their potential racial bias. Part of a campaign commissioned by the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI) and the City of Toronto carried out by the firm Public Inc. the series is titled Toronto for All.

Read the full article

12) From Farce to Tragedy: Žižek Endorses Trump

Ian Steinman, Left Voice

In an interview published yesterday the famous philosopher, and Left Forum keynote speaker, Slavoj Zizek seriously (and not merely ironically, as he has done before) declared that if he was voting in the American elections he would vote for Trump. The victory of Trump, despite Trump being absolutely "disgusting", according to Zizek would trigger a "big awakening". It would cause a fundamental shock to the American political system and force realignments, the emergence of new political phenomenon.

Read the full article

13) At Least 40 Women Have Accused Bill Clinton or Donald Trump of Sexual Assault

Doug Johnson Hatlem, Counterpunch 

No, Bill Clinton is not just accused of consensual affairs. Yes, he and Hillary Clinton are a team. She has been a regular part of attacking Bill’s victims, has worn the mantle of his supposed successes, and has promised that he will have a key place in running the economy in her administration.

Read the full article

14) How ‘sex work’ killed the victim

Raquel Sanchez, Feminist Current

The girls want to learn — that much is clear. If there is one message that comes across from Al Jazeera’s article, “Educating girls in South Sudan,” (sponsored by the International Women’s Media Foundation) and written by photographer Sara Hylton, is that the girls from the Unity State of South Sudan want to pursue their education.

Read the full article

15) The German model is producing hell on earth!

Dr. Kraus, Trauma and Prostitution Blog

Thank you for inviting me here to Vancouver. Thank you to all the organizations that have made this possible, especially Suzanne Jay, who invited me and organized everything.

Prostitution has always been legal in Germany, except a short period of time in the early 20th century.[1] Germany instituted a law in 2002 that tried to make out of prostitution a job as any other. The politicians thought, that it wasn´t prostitution itself that was the problem, but the discrimination of the women by the society and the lack of rights they had. Considering the problem from this perspective, they wanted to strengthen the women as best as possible. (They said): Prostitution should not be seen any more as something “against the good morals“, but as a job. For now on, the women were considered as workers, “sex workers.” And if they are workers, they should have the same rights as any other worker that run a business or is employed somewhere, like having a social security or if their rights are not respected, they should have the right to enforce a claim by legal action. The state didn´t want to put any regulations concerning the sex practices. They said that nobody can say how people should have sex. As they run a business, they are also allowed to make publicity for it. So the new law cancelled the restriction of promoting prostitution.

Read the full article

16) 'This city sees itself in Standing Rock': Climate advocate says dozens of Winnipeggers travelling to protest

CBC News

Dozens of Winnipeggers are preparing to make a cross-border drive to Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, where they will join protesters there in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

On Friday, supporters packed into a West End church to drum up support and solidarity for Standing Rock and the Winnipeggers going there.

Read the full article

17) Public sector union hired ‘union avoidance’ lawyer

Martin Regg Cohn, Toronto Star

If you’re a big union having trouble with your own small union representing support staff at headquarters, who ya gonna call?

Union busters?

Surely not. Law firms don’t normally advertise themselves in such stark terms (and never mind copyright infringement with the Ghostbusters movie franchise).

Read the full article

See also: Adam Capay, the ONDP, the US Greens & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List: October 23-30

Right Sector, Liberalism, Colin Kaepernick, Pamela Anderson & more -- August & September on The Left Chapter in review

August and September saw 33 posts published on The Left Chapter. Though that is the lowest number for any two month period, again the same period saw the highest number of hits for any two month period in our history!



Our top post for the month was one of the most widely read and shared in our history.

Thanks again to all our readers and contributors.

Without any further ado the top six posts from the two months, in terms of hits, are:

1)  What is far-right organization Right Sector doing marching in Toronto's Ukrainian Festival Parade?

Toronto's Ukrainian Festival is an annual celebration of Ukrainian culture and food that takes place on Bloor St. W. and that draws large crowds looking to enjoy some traditional song and dance, perogies and all the other things that get people out to festivals. The organizers say it is the world's largest such festival.

Read More! 

2) Viral photo of North Dakota Pipeline Protest is 100% FAKE. Stop sharing it.

A photo is going viral on Facebook that purports to show the Standing Rock Pipeline protest in North Dakota.

It was posted by someone named Tyler Eldridge and is getting thousands of shares every few minutes, standing at near 200,000 shares at the time of this post.

Read More! 

3) Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism

Do you remember this moment?

That time when newly minted President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for absolutely nothing other than having won an election in the wake of the George Bush apparent catastrophe and for having given nice speeches about "hope", closing down Guantanamo and supposedly taking the US in a new direction that would be a departure from the death dealing of the past.

Read More!

4) It was not the American military that fought for democracy and justice. The people -- and people like Kaepernick -- did that.

No American soldier in decades has died for anyone's rights or for "democracy".

Period.

This is a total crock and an American fantasy.

Read More!

5) Is May about to repudiate member democracy and tank her own Green Party?

Something very troubling, it seems, is afoot in the Canadian Green Party.

Read More!

6) Pamela Anderson is not the porn 'hypocrite', so-called leftist and progressive porn supporters are

By now you have likely heard that Pamela Anderson -- so often derided as some kind of joke -- has taken a, supposedly, surprising and strong stand against pornography.

For this she has been attacked with the usual ridicule of the "freedom" wing of liberalism's useful idiots as some kind of "hypocrite".

Read More!

Although published originally in June, Canada Post's 'problems' are driven by the neo-liberal assault on public services was widely shared again when a lockout appeared to be imminent and would have been third on this list had it been from the period.

The top food post was Sugar For My Honey - An Exceptional Austrian/German Bistro-Cafe in South Etobicoke (in fact it was one of the most widely read food posts we have ever published).

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share?

Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

See also: Black Lives Matter, Canada Post, Tory Austerity & more -- June and July on The Left Chapter in review

See also: NDP "Democracy", Ontario Liberal Injustices, Etobicoke Thrift Shops & more -- April and May on The Left Chapter in review

Viral photo of North Dakota Pipeline Protest is 100% FAKE. Stop sharing it.

A photo is going viral on Facebook that purports to show the Standing Rock Pipeline protest in North Dakota.

It was posted by someone named Tyler Eldridge and is getting thousands of shares every few minutes, standing at near 200,000 shares at the time of this post.

In his post of the photo Eldridge has the nerve to say "This is why the media won't show the protest on the pipeline #StayAware — at Pipeline! North Dakota."

Except that another reason the media won't show this version of "protest on the pipeline" is that the photo is 100% fake.

It is a photo of the Woodstock concert in 1969 lifted from Getty Images.

I have no idea why Eldridge would do this or what ego trip he is on leaving this deceptive and fake photo up, but it is harmful to the cause, it is a lie and it should not be shared.

Truth matters.

As a poster on the protest page says:

Sharing false information is just as bad as the Main-stream media not reporting on this at all. Message This Tyler Eldridge and force him to remove his harmful post. This is not the kind of attention this situation needs. This is Woodstock in 1969. If he want's to be famous, make him famous for being an asshat.

Indeed.

See also: Stop sharing the false -- and racist -- Ontario niqab driver's licence meme

See also: Stop sharing the refugees vs. seniors internet myths!